Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 548 - 531: Gacha Psychology

Chapter 548: Chapter 531: Gacha Psychology

"Make players... progressively unluckier??"

Lilith felt shocked, clearly, it was a practice she had never considered before.

At present, the gacha system in pay-to-win games could basically be described by "Conservation of Luck."

While it might not seem so on an individual level, with some players always being lucky and others always unlucky, on the whole, it indeed conserves luck.

Some unlucky people struggle because there are Whales who live in peace.

From a game developer’s perspective, aside from a very small number of utterly shameless developers who might choose to secretly alter data and act unethically, most game developers would not tamper with the gacha probabilities.

The reason is simple:

The positioning of pay-to-win game developers is, strictly speaking, consistent with casinos.

Casinos earn money through their commission; therefore, regardless of whether the gamblers win or lose, the casino will never lose.

The scenario many imagine, where "the casino doesn’t let a winning gambler leave," simply doesn’t happen.

On the contrary, casinos would loudly escort the winning gambler back and vigorously promote it, because the notion that "a gambler really won money at this casino" helps attract more people to gamble.

It’s the same with pay-to-win games.

Although most pay-to-win game developers strictly control the drop rate of the "UP Pool," players will always encounter situations where they don’t get the advance gold or the small guarantee goes awry. But overall, pay-to-win game developers still strive to maintain fairness in the gacha system and even welcome those lucky players to spread word of their "consecutive golds" or "double golds."

To break this state of affairs, one must create a gacha system that "leaves most people dissatisfied."

So, Lilith’s question was, "Making players progressively unluckier seems fine, but how exactly can we achieve that?"

Gu Fan explained, "It’s simple, although the officials require all game developers to disclose the drop probabilities in their gacha systems, there are actually no specific demands for the exact numbers.

"And what they require is often the ’minimum’ or ’guaranteed’ values, not necessarily the most accurate probabilities and mechanisms.

"Given this, we have some leeway to operate."

Lilith nodded slightly, such things were not hard to verify.

Just open any pay-to-win gacha mobile game, and you can find corresponding instructions in the gacha system.

For example:

"This period’s character A in the UP Pool has a base probability of 1.4% to obtain a Five-star character, and when a Five-star character appears, there’s a 55% chance it will be character A, with a guaranteed acquisition of character A in a maximum of 140 pulls."

If there is a description like this, it can be interpreted as follows:

With every pull, the player has a 1.4% chance of getting a Five-star character.

But this Five-star character is not necessarily the UP Pool character the player wants, it could also be some weaker, permanent Five-star characters.

This is also explained: When the player pulls a Five-star character, or what’s commonly referred to as "get gold," there’s a 55% chance of obtaining the UP Pool character A, which means there’s a 45% chance of getting some other undesired permanent pool Five-star character.

But merely setting a probability is not enough.

Because according to expectations, a probability of 1.4% means that one should "get gold" after about 70 pulls, but if it was the true probability, a large number of players would not "get gold" even after 70 pulls.

Thus, the game basically operates on pseudo probabilities.

Actually, the practice is, when a player hasn’t "got gold" after about 60 pulls, the probability of "getting gold" upon further pulling will significantly increase.

For instance, if the chance increased by 1% with each unsuccessful pull before, after 60 pulls with no "gold," the increase could suddenly jump to 5% or even 10%.

This ensures that the player will definitely "get gold" before or after 70 pulls, thereby triggering a "small guaranteed."

From the player’s perspective, only "getting gold" after 70 pulls is quite unlucky.

But an analysis of this system reveals that the developers have generally increased the drop rate.

Those with good luck don’t need 70 pulls to "get gold," and those with poor luck who wouldn’t "get gold" even after 70 pulls are forcibly given "gold" by the officials at the 70th pull.

So, calculating it all, the overall probability for a player to draw a Five-star character is much higher than 1.4%.

But game developers won’t disclose the actual drop rates, instead they write a basic expected drop rate of 1.4%, a practice that is completely allowed by the official rules.

If game companies really wanted to, they could also reverse inflate the numbers.

For instance, they might claim that their game’s drop rate is 1%, when in reality it’s 5%.

However, no company actually does this, because having a high drop rate is already a fairly generous concession, and they would certainly want to promote it extensively.

Even if players don’t express gratitude, at the very least, it’s good if they complain less.

With reverse inflation, players might not notice and wouldn’t feel that the company is making concessions, they would only think they’re lucky, which means the concession is wasted, right?

And right now, Gu Fan was planning to exploit this very point.

"President Li, here’s what I’m thinking," he said.

"Firstly, the microtransaction system is a black box, and players can’t fully understand everything inside it.

"Secondly, although the authorities will scrutinize this black box, they don’t concern themselves with all the mechanics; they only require that the guaranteed drop rate we advertise corresponds to the actual in-game rate, without specifying how exactly it should correspond.

"Taking these two points together, we can devise a way to inflate their psychological expectations when their perception is weakest, only to let them crash hard on the ground later!

"There’s a saying, ’It’s easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but difficult to go from extravagance to frugality.’

"We design a gacha system where the more you pull, the lower the drop rates become.

"Of course, this system needs some element of deception. We still need to differentiate the Whales from the Unlucky People, so that there’s a sense of randomness with each pull.

"Which means, while all players fall under the principle that ’the more you pull, the lower the drop rate gets,’ there will be those who get lucky and those who don’t.

"Our aim is for players to vaguely sense something’s off, but can’t outright prove it."

Lilith frowned slightly: "Would the official authorities agree to this?"

Gu Fan continued, "That’s the issue we’ve discussed before: the authorities only require that the base drop rate for five-star characters is not below 0.5%, plus the rates we advertise must be true and not inflated, though they allow reverse inflation.

"Therefore, we can create a ’the more you draw, the unluckier you get’ system within these rules.

"We’ll set our five-star character base drop rate at 0.5%, which is lower than what is common in current microtransaction games, but it doesn’t matter.

"Like other microtransaction games, we’ll also have two UP pools per month, with new character UP pools in the first half of the month, and old character revival UP pools in the second half.

"Our actual rates are:

"Within the same UP pool, the earlier the pulls, the higher the drop rate, and the later, the lower the drop rate.

"While other games cycle at 60, 80, or 160 pulls, we cycle at 1000 pulls.

"Within these 1000 pulls, the base drop rate for our five-star characters is 0.5%, with an overall drop rate of 1.5%, but this rate decreases with each pull.

"This means the combined drop rate is highest in the first 100 pulls and lowest in the last 100, but on average the rate is still 1.5%.

"We’re more generous than other developers at first, but over time and on average, we are worse.

"Since most players don’t exceed 300 pulls in any given pool, we end up with UP pools that have a higher overall drop rate earlier on, and lower as you go further.

"Only when it drops significantly will it hit rock bottom and bounce back to reset.

"For instance, a player spends 300 pulls in the first half of the month and 200 in the second half, then does the same the following month.

"At this point, they would clearly feel more unlucky this month than last, and the second half pool feels unluckier than the first half.

"This creates a sense of getting increasingly unlucky.

"However, once they reach 1000 pulls, it hits bottom and bounces back, the drop rates increase again, so they don’t become so disheartened that they quit the game."

Lilith found this a bit complicated, her brows knitting together in thought.

After a while, she nodded slowly, "It sounds quite reasonable."

The principle was actually simple; it was merely a psychological effect.

In terms of probability, this method didn’t have any major fundamental differences from what other game developers were doing.

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